African countries face some of the highest water risk in the world, now exacerbated by climate change. But management and investment are often bigger challenges. Tackling them can strengthen economies and build countries' resilience to climate change.
Today, WRI and nearly 20 partners launched, Energy Access Explorer, a dynamic open-source platform which will equip energy planners, donors and clean energy entrepreneurs with the information they need to electrify East Africa.
11% of the world's population still lives without reliable electricity, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa. New data from Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda reveals an untapped solution: high potential for wind, solar and hydropower.
This paper introduces the methods and data used in Energy Access Explorer – an online, open-source, interactive platform that uses satellite imagery and local data to visualize energy supply and demand in East Africa, equipping electricity planners, investors and clean energy entrepreneurs with the data they need to close the electricity gap.
While the number of people without electricity has dropped, experts predict that more than 600 million will still lack power in 2030. Nine out of 10 of them will live in sub-Saharan Africa.
Electricity is crucial for providing quality healthcare services. Decentralized renewable technologies will allow much of Africa to leapfrog into a world of clean, uninterrupted electricity supply. This webinar will zoom in on Population Services Kenya, an organization that has tested financing models for deploying affordable solar power solutions to healthcare clinics.
About half of the world's land is collectively held. In this podcast, WRI Vice President Lawrence MacDonald interviews Peter Veit, director of the Land and Resource Rights Initiative in the Governance Center at WRI, about the social, environmental and economic case for securing tenure for indigenous and community lands.
As a side event at the African Development Bank’s annual Civil Society Organizations Policy Forum, this panel will explore innovative approaches for facilitating successful implementation of one of Africa’s biggest renewable energy programs – the Africa Renewable Energy Initiative (AREI).
When palm oil companies forcibly took communities' land in Liberia, lawyer Alfred Brownell tried to stop them. He received threats to his life and had to escape the country — but he's not done fighting.
Some schools in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania see more than a dozen of their students injured or killed in road crashes every year. Traffic engineer Ayikai Charlotte Poswayo wants to change that.
Solar power provides Kenya's health clinics with critical services like reliable electricity and the ability to safely store vaccines. And there's another bonus: increased profits.
Bamboo isn't native to Malawi, but it could help the country adapt to mosquito outbreaks and other climate change impacts.
This case study in the World Resources Report, Towards a More Equal City, examines transformative urban change in Johannesburg, South Africa, through transit-oriented development (TOD). The Corridors of Freedom program aims to help reduce spatial inequality in the city by extending bus rapid transit to many new areas and spur new or improved infrastructure for non-motorized transport, social facilities and public infrastructure.
Malawi's growing population depends on forests for wood or charcoal for cooking, but these forests are being cleared for agriculture, which 80 percent of Malawians rely on to support themselves. To combat this potentially disastrous trend, Malawi's government plans to pay its young people to plant trees.
Entrepreneurs from Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia and more come for training, networking and to pitch investors their restoration business plans.
When Kenya's Najile health clinic lacked electricity, clinicians couldn't vaccinate children or deliver babies at night. Rooftop solar panels changed everything.
Degraded land is a challenge for many of Africa’s farmers, and plays a role in driving people away from their villages into cities. But a new wave of young entrepreneurs is heading back to the land, bringing with them startups and jobs focused on restoring forests and farmland.
This case study in the World Resources Report, Towards a More Equal City, examines transformative urban change in Kampala, Uganda, by following its sanitation reforms. The research follows the political process that created favorable conditions for the implementation of innovative solutions to sanitation service provision. The unfolding change remains vulnerable to shifting fiscal priorities and local political instabilities, however, with continued support from all stakeholders, it seems likely that the urban change in Kampala will be sustained.
Sierra Leone and Tanzania, two low-income countries vulnerable to extreme weather, shifting rainfall patterns, warming temperatures, sea level rise and deforestation, face difficult choices about how much to spend on data about climate change. New research offers some insights.
The Niger Delta, lush with waters from Niger River, is a veritable oasis at the edge of the Sahara. It is remote, remarkable and a reminder of the complex interplay between some some of the biggest issues facing Europe and climate change.